Our mission trip to Peru in 1999 was one of the first trips for Children’s Missionary Outreach (AME). The team consisted of Francine and Alain Haxaire, Marie- Françoise Lacorre, her two daughters – Céline et Hélène , Saul, Marion and Gilmer from Piura.
The plane journey took us via Atlanta in the USA, and we finally arrived in Lima, the capital, on Peru’s National Day (July 28). The various stages of our journey went from Lima, to Piura and Chulucanas, then onto Huancayo and finally to Cerro de Pasco.
We stayed with Christians and met lots of children in all sorts of places: churches, villages, in the streets, in schools and in parks. We were in for a few surprises, but that’s the nature of mission work, for which the key watchword is flexibility.
We helped young people and adults to create pictures that introduce God’s Word to children in a way they can understand. There was such a hunger to understand how to better communicate with children.
We didn’t get around to visiting the tourist spots such as Lake Titicaca, the City of Cuzco, Machu Picchu or the Nazca region, but we did notice the influence of the Inca civilization and Spain up to 1821, the date of independence.
But from Lima we did go up high above sea level to Huncayo, which is at an altitude of 3,250 metres, and then even higher to Cerro de Pasco at 4,380 metres in the Cordillera Huaytapallana.
In one of the villages, children had come a long way to be at the” Around Jesus “event and some of them had removed their shoes so they wouldn’t wear them out.
The city of Cerro de Pasco is one of the highest cities in the world. It’s quite common to get headaches there and it can be very cold. The open cast mines are the city’s only source of wealth. The streets are covered in black dust from the different metals. In the evenings, in the church meeting room, we had to light candles and fix them to the chairs, as the electricity was not very reliable.
It was here that the girls from the college heard the Good News about Jesus with great enthusiasm and invited him to come into their hearts. Many of them asked for our autographs (there were no selfies in those days!) They had never seen French people before!
Oops, almost forgot, we also met a lot of llamas and alpacas. Amazing, they were!
